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The Spatial Layout of Hierarchy: Residential Style of the Modern Japanese Nobility

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The Spatial Layout of Hierarchy: Residential Style of the Modern Japanese Nobility 22 Chapter TL:Layout 1 8/5/07 16:52 Page 357 First published in Takie Sugiyama Lebra (ed.), Japanese Social Organization, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992 22 The Spatial Layout of Hierarchy: Residential Style of the Modern Japanese Nobility ocial relations are ordered in and across space as well as time. Put in SGiddens’ (1984) terms, ‘structuration’ involves space-focused ‘regional- ization,’ in conjunction with time-focused ‘routinization.’ The spatial representation of social hierarchy in particular, whether physical or symbolic, literal or metaphorical, is widely recognized and often taken for granted par- ticularly in its vertical dimension, namely high and low, above and below, upstairs and downstairs, and so on. Barry Schwartz (1981) argues the univer- sality of ‘vertical opposition’ as conceptualized in line with structuralism (without, however, presuming it to be inherent in the structure of the mind). I extend Schwartz’s vertical dimension to other dimensions to show how the actual operation of a hierarchy can deviate from the linear vertical model. Suggestive in this light is Feinberg’s (1988) proposition of two contrastive models of spatial hierarchy, derived from two Polynesian outliers, Anuta and Nukumanu. One is ‘linear’ and ‘unambiguous,’ while the other is ‘circular’ and ‘relativistic’ where high and low are reversible. This essay takes Schwartz and Feinberg as a point of departure to further elaborate the spatial design of status and hierarchy. In the concluding section, I suggest that the spatial analysis can generate a clue to what might be called ‘dyarchy,’ as it is applied to the hereditary elite of Japan including the emperorship. The spatial focus makes much sense in dealing with the Japanese concepts of hierarchy since spatial references are a common alternative to personal names or pronouns for Japanese speakers in address as well as in reference. Avoiding direct use of a personal name, Japanese use spatial terminology to indicate respectful distance, and indeed, a spatial reference often amounts to an honorific. To mention a few out of countless examples of status-indicative spatial nomenclature: The literal equivalent for ‘Your (or his) Excellency’ is ‘Lord Palace’ (tonosama), the lordly status symbolized by the palace where the addressee resides as its master. A common term for identifying a royal prince or princess is miya[sama] (venerable house), miya also referring to a shrine for gods. The special honorific reserved exclusively for emperor and empress, the equivalent for His or Her Majesty, is heika, literally meaning ‘below the stair,’ an instance of reflexive twist in which the sacred personage is identified by the low position taken by an imaginary retainer speaking 357 22 Chapter TL:Layout 1 8/5/07 16:52 Page 358 STATUS upward to the august one seated above the stair. The same reflexive logic holds for some other spatial terms like denka, kakka, and gozen, all meaning ‘your (or his) highness’. Spatial terminology is not limited to ‘respectable’ persons: an ordinary man may he referred to by his relative or acquaintance in terms of the city or district of his residence, as, for example, ‘Hiroshima is coming to stay with us.’ Even widely used terms for ‘you’ and ‘I’ literally mean spatial directions, for example, anata or sochira (over there) for ‘you’ and kochira (over here) for ‘I.’ Such spatial nomenclature sounds natural to Japanese; most of their family names, after all, originated from the names of districts, locations, or landmarks. Japan today is an egalitarian society as far as hereditary status is concerned, with no legally sanctioned ascribed elite except the imperial family. The fol- lowing analysis will touch upon the imperial status, but most of the data come from a more anachronistic source, namely, the abolished nobility, whose life is only recalled and whose status is only ritually reenacted by those who have outlived their titles or by their descendants. The legally outmoded nobility, I claim nevertheless, is culturally contemporary (Lebra 1992), as much as the legally obsolescent ie (stem-family household) or the outcaste status is. For this reason, tense switch will become necessary from time to time. My analysis is centered on the ‘domestic’ space as it interlocks with the ‘public’ space.’ THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE NOBILITY By the nobility is meant the status group called kazoku, ‘the flowery lineage,’ the term applying at once to the group as a whole, each constituent family, and the head of the family to whom the title belonged, which definition allows the term to appear in singular or plural. As a legal entity the kazoku was formally established in 1884 and thrown out of existence in 1947 together with the royal lineage group, the kōzoku (except the emperor and his closest family), under the new constitution that replaced the 1889 Constitution of the Great Empire of Japan. The kazoku ranked immediately below the royal lineage group headed by the emperor and stood tall above the rest of the nation. The latter was further graded into gentry called shizoku (primarily of samurai-vassal origin) and commoners (heimin), and remnants of the outcaste variously renamed. For my present purpose, however, all three can be classified as nonelite or ‘commoners.’ The kazoku was an institutional creation, felt necessary by leaders of Meiji Japan (1868–1912) after the old aristocracy was brought to an end through the Meiji Restoration. Originally and informally the kazoku consisted largely of two major categories of old aristocrats: (1) the former court nobles, gener- ally known as kuge, who had attended the imperial court of the Kyoto Palace until the Restoration; (2) the former feudal domain lords, commonly called daimyō, who had centered at the Edo (Tokyo) Castle of the shogunal court and their respective provincial castles. Later, in 1884, when the kazoku was formally established, a new group of men joined the ranks, much to the dismay of the kuge and daimyō; the new group was elevated because of their 358.
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